Joseph smiled. "Have to be ready for any contingency, as the present situation so aptly proves."
"You know firearms are illegal on Indian land?" asked Yazzie.
"Special government permit," Joseph said. "I think you'll find it passes muster."
"I'm sure I will."
"We don't know what went down back there," Laika said, "but this van took off as we were coming in, someone yelled that they had killed some people, so we chased them. Fortunately, they got stuck, and we caught up."
"They?" asked Yazzie.
"There was a male, but he escaped, ran into the brush. Dr. Tompkins tried to follow him, but he got away. Probably hiding in some canyon by now."
Yazzie took a pair of cuffs off his belt, cuffed the woman, and read her her rights. After he put her in the back of his Fury, he returned to the others. "Thanks for the help," he told Joseph and Laika. "Anything else you can tell us about this woman?"
Laika shook her head. "Just that she said her name was Jezebel Swain. We didn't look in the van at all."
Yazzie nodded. "So what did you find out over at Spider Rock?"
"Nothing much. Another drawing, that's all. In the mud of the wash this time. We called the foundation to report in, though, and they told us we're being taken off the case."
The news came as a huge surprise to Tony. What did it mean? Had Skye actually pulled them off, or was Laika faking it to get rid of Yazzie?
Apparently Yazzie was surprised, too, if his scowl was any indication. "Why?" he asked.
"We're being sent to Maine. There have been several cases of livestock being slaughtered, but the tooth and claw marks don't seem to be from common predators, so we're going to investigate. I don't know if the foundation will send a new team out here or not. We got the facts, but as for theories. . . ." She shrugged. "We did tell them that you've been a great help. They were noncommittal, but I suspect that if a new team is assigned, they'll contact you."
"You're not at all upset about taking it this far and having to leave it?"
"If we got upset every time something like this happened," Laika said with a long-suffering smile, "we'd be gobbling Prozac like M&Ms. It's SOP, that's all. Standard operating procedure when you work for Uncle Sam."
"We might have to get you to testify on this case, you know," Yazzie said.
"Here's how to reach us through the DC office." She handed him one of their fake business cards, and he took it. "Phone, e-mail, address are all there." Then she stuck out her hand. "It's been a real strange trip, Officer. Thanks for all your help."
"My pleasure, Doctor. And speaking of strange trips, Dr. Antonelli can fill you in on what our tracker found. You ever need to get hold of me, the Bureau of Indian Affairs will know where I am." Then he shook their hands, tipped his cowboy hat to Miriam, got in his car, and headed back toward the roadhouse.
"Okay," Tony said, "will someone please explain to me just what the hell is happening?"
"I'll make it quick," said Laika, with a quick glance at Miriam, still sitting in the car. "We're after the prisoner. The person who killed and mummified those men knows where he is. And that person is in the trunk of the car, along with one of his victims."
"What?"
"I'll fill in the details later. Miriam has seen everything that's gone on today. But she
doesn't
know about the prisoner. We're heading north—that's where the thing in the trunk says the prisoner is."
"Holy shit," Tony said softly. "I missed a
lot
, didn't I?"
"A
ll right," Laika said, when the three operatives were back in the car, "we've come to the parting of the ways, Miriam. We ask you not to talk to anyone about what you saw today. But I think you deserve an explanation. The man in the trunk is the result of a private corporation's genetic experiment gone terribly wrong. It's something that we had suspected from the first, and that we now know to be true."
Miriam was nodding, trying to understand, a solemn look on her face. The windows in the car had been up the entire time, and the engine had been running. Laika knew the odds were long that she had heard any of the conversation beyond the occasional shouts.
"He'll be taken care of," Laika went on, "and there will be no more killings. But you
must
remain silent about what you've seen. National security could be at stake." Laika hoped that the woman was as patriotic as she was religious.
"I will," she said. "I won't say anything, I promise."
"That's good. I knew we could trust you. Now listen, you know what we have in the trunk. We've got to head north with it to a government facility there, and we don't have the time to take you back to Gallup. So we can either say goodbye here, or you can tag along with us until we stop tonight—probably just for a few hours at a motel—and then maybe get a bus back to Gallup."
Miriam glanced at Tony, and in the look that passed between them, Laika was afraid she saw the answer. "I've got my backpack," she said. "It's got everything I need. So I'd like to go with you as far as I can."
"Good enough," Laika said. "Let's go."
By the time they passed Abner's, there were two police cars and an ambulance outside it. They looked for Yazzie's Fury but didn't see it. Maybe, Laika thought, he had taken Jezebel Swain to wherever the local jail was.
Laika knew that they had to have better directions than simply "north." Within a few miles she had regretted her invitation to bring Miriam along with them for any distance. What she should have done was just dumped her by the side of the road.
But she knew how Tony felt about her, and this way he and Miriam would have a chance to be with each other, if only for a few miles. Laika thought about what she had to do and how the presence of Miriam might prevent it.
The first thing was to talk to that creature in the trunk and try and get a better handle on where this mission, if mission it was, was located. The second was to get rid of the dried-up corpse who was shoulder-to-shoulder with its killer in the trunk. And the third was to use the online resources of the Company to pinpoint the location of this mission. The sooner the better, for all three objectives.
"Dr. Tompkins," she said to Joseph. "I want a deserted side road."
She caught Tony's quick look of panic in the rearview mirror and knew what he was thinking, that Laika had it in mind to terminate Miriam. She caught his eye, gave him a smile of reassurance, and shook her head slightly so that he knew the woman was safe. It was, she suspected, proof of Tony's loving concern for Miriam that he should have even thought of that. Laika had never,
would
never, terminate an innocent, even if it meant her own life.
A dirt road led them up among some rocks, out of sight of Route 12. Among the rocks the soil seemed loose and sandy, and Laika had Joseph pull off the road. The car handled fine on the loose earth, and they drove back another thirty yards until she told him to stop.
"Vincent, stay here with Miriam," she said. "We won't be too long."
Joseph left the motor running and the air conditioner fan on high. Then he and Laika took their pistols, got out of the car, and walked around to the back. "I want to bury this Damon character. We don't need his body, and I'd rather not be hauling around a corpse in the car."
"If we believe his sister, we've got
two
," Joseph said, nodding at the closed trunk.
"Then I want to talk to a dead man." She handed Joseph the extra set of keys. "Go ahead, open it. I'll cover you." And she stepped a few feet away from the trunk, her weapon poised.
Joseph gingerly unlocked the lid, threw it up, and stepped back. But Ezekiel Swain only lifted up his massive head and looked at them, an act, Laika thought, that must have taken great strength. His head seemed like a beach ball stuffed with wet sand.
He was peaceful enough, so Laika stepped up to the trunk. "We want to bury this one," she said, gesturing at Damon. "Do you want to get out and . . . stretch?"
The great head nodded, and the mouth smiled. As it did, a yellow, viscous fluid trickled from the lower lip. Slowly Ezekiel climbed out of the trunk, and when he stood at last, a good half pint of the same fluid ran out of a wound in his torso, splashing onto the sand.
Ezekiel pressed his hand against the opening until the liquid stopped running between his fingers. Then he looked at Laika. "Hadda take . . . a leak," he said, then laughed that unpleasant rumbling laugh.
Laika could tell that Joseph was as uncomfortable as she was in the presence of this dead-alive creature. And the fact that it was doing one-liners made it even more bizarre. That even a vestige of humor could exist in such a thing seemed horrible. She would have preferred it to be voiceless and zombie-like. It would have been far less disconcerting.
Ezekiel Swain seemed to sense their discomfort and shuffled several steps away from the trunk, as if to give them room to take out the body without coming too close to his replenished, saturated flesh. Joseph lifted out the dried corpse effortlessly, and set it down where the ground was loose and sandy. Then he took a multipurpose tool from beneath the trunk floor, unfolded the spade, and began to dig.
Laika and Ezekiel Swain watched until Joseph had dug a hole four feet deep and three in diameter. Damon's shriveled corpse required no larger space. When Joseph stepped out of the makeshift grave, Laika was surprised to see Ezekiel Swain move to Damon's body and pick it up.
The round, moist face looked down into Damon's dried brown one. "You killed, buried me. In sand," the voice said. "Goes around . . . comes around."
Ezekiel stepped to the edge of the hole and dropped his arms so that the leathery body fell into it. "Go 'head," he said. "Cover up—he won't be back."
Joseph started to scrape the loose sand back into the hole, while Laika found the courage to approach Ezekiel Swain. The smell of urine and bile and other fluids was sharp and pungent, but she tried to ignore it. "But you came back," she said.
"Yeah." He nodded slowly. "But
I
. . . am
special
."
"In what way?"
"Divine. I hear Him. He talks me, tells me where is. Ordered me come, to Him." Ezekiel's shoulders rose and fell, and Laika interpreted it as a shrug. She thought she could hear the sound of moving waters with every motion. "When He ordered, had to go, go out, of grave."
"But were you dead—truly dead?"
Ezekiel pointed to a gaping tear in his throat. "Cut me here. . . ." His hand moved down to the wound from which the fluid had run. "And here. What you think? Grave took
juice
, out of me. Drained me dry."
Joseph, who had been listening, stopped digging and looked at Ezekiel. "What was your grave? Sand?"
Ezekiel nodded again. "Soft. White. Chalky. Juice ran out, sand took the rest. But he called. That night, He called. Had to answer."
"And you fed, didn't you?" asked Laika. "From the hiker. The old Indian. And the one on the horse, right?"
"Don't know. They there, when I needed. Divine provided. He calls. So loud and clear." The laugh broke through again. "I was going, faster than Jezebel. He calls her, too. But I hear better. She was in car, I still keep up, she go so slow."
Laika couldn't figure out if the crudeness of his conversation was due to impaired mental abilities or to the fact that getting air to form words was physically difficult for Ezekiel. She suspected the latter, if for no other reason than that she refused to underestimate the abilities of this creature.
"Were you after them," Laika said, "your sister and Damon? Or were you after the Divine?"
"Both. They went, toward Divine." He pointed with a finger like a sausage toward the grave that Joseph had nearly filled in. "Wanted him. See him die. Now want see Divine." Ezekiel raised his head and looked at the sky to the north. "Divine. In a hole, too. Near church."
"The holy place you mentioned," Laika said. "What can you tell us about it?"
"North. Way north. Days to walk, many days."
"Can you feel it enough to point to it? Exactly?"
Ezekiel closed his eyes, though tears still ran from them. Then he raised his thick arm and pointed. Joseph took a compass from his pocket and lined it up with the direction indicated.
"Maybe three degrees west of north-northwest," Joseph said. "I can get an exact bearing from this location online when we get to a phone."